DID YOU KNOW: May 16, 2025
(Article guest authored by Estelle Smith, a history major at the University of Southern Maine interning with GPL through a paid internship program.)
The Forder House at 1235 Westbrook Street is one of the oldest houses in Portland. Estimates place its construction in the 1730s. It lies in the historic district of Stroudwater Village. Stroudwater Village is gorgeous, situated right near the Stroudwater and Fore Rivers. The Stroudwater Burial Grounds is the resting place of some of the most important faces in Portland’s development. Forder House also shares this neighborhood with some of the most well-known historic houses in Portland, such as the Captain Jesse Partridge House (1346 Westbrook Street) and the Francis Waldo House (1365 Westbrook Street).
The original house was a simple, one-story cape built by Thomas Westbrook and Samuel Waldo for mill workers. The brothers Richard and James Forder, who ran paper mills, purchased the house. Later, during the American Revolution, Mary Billings owned the house and ran it as an Inn and tavern, which sold rum.
Later, it was occupied by the Lobdell family, who had come to the area from Plymouth, Massachusetts around 1795. The family was very large, and one of its more well-known members was Captain Isaac Lobdell V, who served as a soldier in the Revolutionary War. Some Lobdell family members are also buried in the Stroudwater Burial Ground.
The Forder House is now a two-and-a-half story building with Greek Revival characteristics. It’s been quite well maintained and renovated, with some original brickwork exposed. These changes happened in the mid-1800s when the home was owned by the Tate family.
I’m sure that many have heard of the nearby George Tate House (1270 Westbrook Street), which is well-maintained as a historic house museum and is wonderful to visit. The Forder House was owned at one point by George Tate (called George Tate Jr.), the grandson of the famous Captain and King’s Mast Agent bearing the same name. George Jr. and Esther Tate’s son, Augustus, was a farmer. He’s responsible for enlarging the building to the house that’s there today. It stayed in the Tate family through Robert, George Jr.’s adopted son, and his wife until 1921.
Like many of its neighbors, the house remains a historic asset in Portland. And like any good Portland historic site, it has its share of rumors of being haunted.